A Nation Reborn
by yanzak
Summary: Ideas are hard to kill. On a nameless backwater, a flash of light heralds the re-emergence of a branch of humanity thought lost to history.
1. Chapter 1

Ideas are hard to kill. On a nameless backwater a flash of light heralds the re-emergence of a branch of humanity though lost to history.

/

/

His name in the common tongue was _Cro'ps_. In the ancient tongue of long-forgotten _Terra_, its closest translation would have been Strong of Voice. He had been born a full turning of the seasons after the sky had caught fire and the blue-skinned ones had come. His mother had been a _Guardian of the water_, one of those who stayed behind to protect the precious oasis that was the tribe's source of strength, from the other lesser tribes who envied them for their wealth. His father had been a mounted hunter. One of the few skilled enough to tame a Humped One. Atop its back and armed with the tribes only copper spear he had hunted the Leather skinned ones for meat. Then a month after the sky had burned the Blue Ones had come to the tribe.

For a while, they had simply stood impassively. Their warriors carrying strange blunt spears at their shoulders. A strange floating plate hovering in front of them as the tribe's Elders had cycled through every dialect they knew, from the guttural drawl of the mountain craftsmen to the singsong tune of the coastal fishermen. Then when the Blue Ones had listened for long enough they had spoken. They had explained that they were a new tribe, that they would welcome any who joined them. They had brought gifts, knives and spears of such quality they had to be seen to be believed. They had treated the sick with medicine that actually _worked!_ Then they had left, with an offering that any who came to their tribe's new camps would be given water and food.

As _Cro'ps _had grown more and more tribes had merged with the Blue Ones. Most tribes were not as lucky as his. The oasis that his tribe lived around had never failed them. Yes, there was the dry season when its supply was reduced, but it never dried up, unlike those of so many others. Until the day the Blue Ones sent another of their floating plates to fly over the tribe. It was dark, and the moon was obscured by cloud so no one saw what the strange device did. They had only known it was there because of the strange humming of the magic that let it fly like the birds.

Then a two days later the oasis dried up. And stayed dried up. For a full cycle of the moon, the Elders had kept the tribe calm. They had led them in rituals and supplication of the ancestor spirits, whilst the stored water reserves they had been planning to use for the seasons trading were gradually consumed.

Then the Blue Ones had come. The Blue Ones had offered their condolences for the tribes suffering and had extended a hand of friendship. Joining together was surely the best for all involved. The Blue Ones offered a new place to live. They promised that thirst would be just a memory. Many, mostly the elders, men and women wayed down by a lifetime of hardship wanted to accept. Others had objected. Some had worried about abandoning the land of their ancestors. Still more had simply not trusted the Blue Ones. Life amongst the dunes was harsh and cruel. No one, not even the most well-meaning traveller aided another for free. Surely the Blue Ones had a motive, surely they sought to gain something?

His mother had been one of the most vocal opponents. She had killed to defend the waters of the oasis. She had driven away desperate traders and travellers begging for aid because there simply wasn't enough water to go around. And now the Blue Ones wanted to render all her hard choices worthless? No. That would not stand. She laid the blame on them. Their flying disk had done something, it had poisoned the oasis. She had rallied others to her way of thinking. The mood had changed. The faceless guards of the Blue One's envoy, with their strange glowing eyes, had tensed slightly. Their odd blunt spears had been brought from their resting position at their shoulders into the ready position.

His father had stepped forward to support his lover. Maybe he had raised his spear to gesture with to add emphasis, maybe he had decided to put it to a more physical use. Either way, the result was the same. Over the years of his childhood, _Cro'ps_ had heard stories of the strange weapons of the Blue Ones. None of them did justice to the _sheer_ brutality of their work. When his vision returned there were maybe a dozen of them left. The rest, his mother, father, the elders, they were simply gone. As the dazed survivors stumbled around the burning ruins of their huts the sand under their feet cut at them. The heat from the weapons had turned fused it into the obsidian the mountain traders spoke of sometimes.

They couldn't stay. There was nothing for them here. They gathered up what tools and water was left, and with the Blue Ones departing in one of their flying machines, the two dozen survivors had set off south. By some unspoken agreement, he had become the leader of all that was left.

Strife beset them. Traders offered steep prices. Settled tribes refused to allow them admittance. The others bitterly cursed them. For years their trib had been a source of envy for its wealth of water, now the other, lesser tribes were taking their petty vengeance. He didn't believe it. It was the Blue Ones. They had spread the word he was sure. That any who traded with the dwindling band of survivors, who had dared to raise, or seem to raise a hand against their envoys would not enjoy their favour.

Finally, after a month they reached the end. There simply wasn't enough left. Not enough food, not enough water, not enough hope. He had offered them all a choice. Separate and try and survive on their own or join him in a final meal before stepping off the cliff top they camped above and joining their ancestors. None of them had left. What was the point? Surly to die surrounded by those you knew, after filling your belly with what little food and water were left was better than wandering the desert aimlessly as a drifter, as a _tribeless_? Dying alone and unremembered by anyone.

So, they had dined and drank. They had laughed, sang, cursed fate and the Blue Ones, then it had been time. They had stood together at the cliff edge. The wind whipping in from the south, knifing into their tattered rags. They had prepared themselves. Linked hands and prepared to take that final step.

"Pathetic! I saw what they did to you. They sabotaged the Oasis, they doomed your tribe. Then they butcher you when you hade the nerve to complain. And now you're just going to end it all, to give up? Pathetic! You have to make a stand, to show them they can't do this to other humans, or it'll never stop!"

They turned. Standing behind them, silhouetted against the moon was a figure. He wore armour. Not leather armour, like the champion of a wealthy tribe, might, _might_ just be equipped with if the ancestors smiled on him. But armour that seemed to be wrought from the same material as the Blue One's warriors. Except that it was dark as night with crisscrossing patterns of crimson lights running across its surface.

His voice reminded them of the Blue Ones. It had the strange effect of being overlayed on top of another language, one utterly incomprehensible to the men and women who stood utterly transfixed. Transfixed because the figure wore no helmet. They could see his face, and that face was human.

/

I found _Cro'ps _in the vehicle hanger. The overhead lights were off to reduce power consumption and energy emissions, but with his new Cybran implants he could see just fine. He was standing with the stillness that only a Cybran who was using his implants to control motor functions could manage. He was standing on top of one of the second-floor loading platforms gazing out over the assembled war machines. By the standards of the Infinite War, it was a pathetic force.

Three Hunter light assault bots, 12-meter-tall armless mechs with reverse jointed legs and an underslung light pulse laser.

Two Mantis assault bots. Slightly shorter than the Hunters at a mear eleven meters but _far_ more threatening. Four-legged insectoid like machines that weighed in at almost a hundred tones, twin pulse lasers jutted from its front like the fangs of some apex predator. Its back arched up slightly to house a crude but functional engineering suit, complete with its own fabrication and repair abilities.

Further along were the "big guns" of my "army". A single Medusa self-propelled artillery piece, and a Sky Slammer mobile surface to air missile system.

I never piloted an Armoured Command Unit during the Infinite War. I never technically qualified to pilot a support Armoured Command Unit, it was just the shifting tides of war that found me in the cramped cockpit of XGU-136. Even so, even as a sideshow in a war of billions, I had commanded _armies_. I had directed artillery barrages that smashed the crusts of planets and drowned the surface in a molten sea of lava. When I smashed apart enemy cities to free my enslaved Cybran brothers and sisters from their prisons, I had carpet bombed tens of thousands with the tap of a finger.

Now I skulked in a cave with 30 barbarian primitives, from some lost colony, hastily educated to the nature of modern war and the technologies it was fought with, (not to mention basic hygiene) by Cybran implants and memory engrams. My arsenal consisted of seven functional machines with the slim possibility of increasing that number in the foreseeable future.

My opponents? An alien occupation force that, judging from my tentative eavesdropping of enemy communications was making significant gains in subverting the local human population to its cause, and I still had no idea where the hell the quantum rift caused by the destruction of my sACU mid jump had sent me.

If there indeed is a life after death, then a hell of a lot of people are cackling with mirth at my predicament. Still, with a little luck perhaps I can put off meeting them for a while yet.

I walked up next to _Cro'ps,_ my eyes switching to other wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum as I entered the near total darkness of the hanger.

"You know, most soldiers tend to spend the night before their first battle doing… _something_."

He shot me a glance and then turned back to looking over the machines.

"Your fellows certainly are. I won't hold it against you. Go to the barracks, party with your people. The implants will make sure you're ready for tomorrow." I had set the fabricator's in the mess hall to produce a very week bear for the men and women scheduled to take part in tomorrow's offensive. For a people who viewed water as a valuable commodity, it was a novel experience. They were chanting and painting their faces with protective warding's, calling on ancestor spirits.

"You look down on us. We're just desert savages. Aren't we?" _Cro'ps _wasn't using translation software. He was forcing himself to speak English. His dark skin, typical of his people merged with the background. He had decided to forgo the facial circuitry that most Cybrans adopted as a matter of pride.

"You're using your facial expression analyser. Good. Its important to get used to the changes becoming a Cybran brings." I replied looking over the machines.

"You don't deny it." It was a statement, not a question.

"No. I don't." I sighed. Rubbing my head in irritation. I was never good at this… People talk.

"What's happened to your people is monstrous. That some fragments of humanity were scattered out in the galaxy, forgotten by the rest of us, left to regress technologically and then be slaughtered by aliens while the rest of us slaughtered ourselves? Unacceptable. You're right. I do look down on the people of this world. If you live to the age of 50, you're called an Elder. Bronze Is your most advanced weapon. _Bronze!_"

I felt my hands balling into fists. I considered activating the emotional regulation subroutines but decided against it. Bottling up emotions never worked out well in the long run. I was about to go on. To explain that my disgust came from the fact that so many had been killed in a thousand-year, three-way war while out here on this miserable planet good people had died for centuries if not millennia from completely preventable problems.

I was about to say that, but _Cro'ps _cut me off. "You're right."

"Wha-"

"You're right. We are savages. I've seen the pictures. The ones from your education packages. Citys that stretch into the sky. Limbs are regrown in moments. Even this." He raised his arms and swept the around to encompass the small underground base I had fabricated using me pilot suits SOS fabricator.

"You think of this place an embarrassment, to us it's a palace. We'll be your soldiers. We'll kill Blue Ones. Every one of them if we must. Just promise me one thing." He swept his hand out at the assembled war machines. "Promise me whatever happens you'll never let us go back to what we were before. Promise me that you'll never let another die of thirst or hunger when you can save them. Do that and you can think whatever the hell you think of us." He turned away leaving me standing alone in the hanger. Thinking about what was to come.

/

Year 495 M40 standard imperial calendar.

_Administrative unit Alpha._

Por'Vre Noa reclined in his office chair. His assistant drone brought him a fresh set of the bittersweet tea that he had acquired a taste for since arriving on this world. His world. XV8815 also known to its inhabitants, its non-human inhabitants at least as T'au'ko. (Literally little T'au, due to its similarity to the homeworld.) was too small and insignificant for a member of the noble Ethereal caste to be needed to oversee its management.

As such the highest-ranking members of the four castes each managed their own affairs with the tacit understanding that whilst the situation remained stable the Water Castes with their training as bureaucrats would occupy a position as… first amongst equals.

The Tau had first come to T'au'ko for minerals. The efforts to rebuild in the aftermath of the Damocles Gulf Crusade had started to seriously drain the resources of the empire. Officially the stockpiles of strategic resources were full, and the ranks of the Fire Casest were swelling every day with freshly raised Cadres. As a bureaucrat of the middle-rank Noa knew…_Otherwise_.

The situation was not critical. Not yet. Hence the establishment of mining outposts like this one. The wealth of the deposits had been a pleasant surprise. The fact that there were approximately a hundred thousand humans eking out an existence on a world that was slightly too arid for the Tau to find comfortable was a considerably less pleasant surprise. The Fire Caste had wanted to launch punitive expeditions against the various human tribes that dotted the planet. Eliminating them one by one before they could become a threat.

Fortunately thought Noa smiling to himself as he finished his drink and placed the empty mug on the tray of the hovering personal assistance drone, cooler heads had prevailed.

In the last message dispatched to the rest of the Empire by courier ship, he had been able to report that approximately a third of the local Humans had joined into various Tau sponsored enclaves. It was taking time to educate them of course. Longer than Noa would like but it was happening. In another two or three generations it would be possible to transfer the duties of the Tau personal on the planet to the local Humans. The one hundred thousand Tau on planet could easily be scaled back to a few tens of thousands. As the Humans, grateful to their civilisers took over the role of maintaining the planetary defences force and the vital mining outposts. With just a few Tau to guide them of course.

There had been difficulties of course. Like that _disturbance_ at the Tribe of The Ever-Flowing Water last month. Officially the Tau had offered aid to a tribe whose water supply had failed, been met with resistance and responded. Unfortunately for the Fire Warriors and his immediate Water caste inferior Ka,Th, who had informed him of the predicament of the tribe and their unfortunate response, this was Noa's third deployment as defacto planetary governor. He knew a few tricks. Small cameras had been placed in the drone hangers of all outposts. One had recorded the unorganised deployment of a drone approximately a month before the incident. It had been a matter of child's play to estimate its destination based on its exit vector.

There would have to be consequences. Initiative on the part of subordinates was expected, but there were limits. Idly he wondered who the instigator had been. The Fire Caste had been pushing harder for a more forceful integration and the drone's control system was under their purview. At the very least it would be some mid ranked member. A Shas Ui. Although realistically it would probably be Shas Vre Oml. The hardened one-eyed commander of the Fire Caste on the planet. She was always one for the direct approach.

A blinking light flashed on his desk's communication system. Speak of the Mont'au, and it shall appear. He thought as he answered the call.

Oml's face popped up in front of his own, projected by holographic emitters set into the desks. His eyes narrowed. The de facto commander of all Tau military assets on the planet was in full armour. Not unusual for her but in the edges of the image were other Fire Warriors. Dozens of them in various stages of preparation. In the background, Earth Caste technicians were calling to each other. Giving readiness reports on Battlesuits and gunships. The clipped tones of an Air caste pilot broke in on the communications net. He reported that his Orca transport flight was fully ready and awaiting the ground forces to commence loading.

"What is happening?"

/

Airbase _Anor'the _had a garrison of 2000 Tau and was one of 79 such facilities on the planet. As a rule, the Tau do not defend worlds by establishing huge fortifications as the Imperium did. Instead in those cases where the fleet did not manage to stop an enemy in the void, the Tau would use their superior mobility, in the form of a fully mechanised army and Orca drop ships to strike at the enemy as they landed from as many directions as possible. Small forces would be eliminated in their entirety before they could be reinforced. Those that made landfall in sufficient numbers would find themselves harassed constantly as they tried to expand their bridgehead. Until the Tau commanders felt that a moment for a decisive confrontation had come they would bleed the enemy for every inch they took, trading land for time and time for enemy blood.

At any one time, three Orca dropships were ready and waiting on the landing pads with a combined total of a full Hunter Cadre huddled inside the dim, cramped interior. Awaiting the call to defend Tau assets on the planet from any attack. The local Humans were no threat. In fact, many thousands of them had now been recruited as auxiliaries to help assist the Fire caste. No, the base and others like it had been constructed to defend against the possibility of the Orks or Imperials launching a raid on the mining outpost. The Navy was spread thin defending more important worlds and replacing losses. Its only presence was a single courier craft currently away on assignment. If an attack came it would be stopped on the ground. Still, the Fire caste was sure that they were up to the task.

And so, as fate would have it, with the sun rising in the north, Airbase _Anor'the _would become the sight of the first open conflict between forces of the Cybran Nation and the Tau Empire.

The attack began with 22 humans infiltrating and disabling the outer defences. They were not comparable to proper Cybran commandos, the legendary, heavily mechanised soldiers who for a thousand years had struck seemingly with impunity at any target they faced no matter the countermeasures put into place. Their implants were mostly just cranial in nature. Their midnight black armour was barely a step above civilian grade environmental hard suits and their weaponry pitifully light. None the less they had spent the past month in a cybernetically induced sleep, running through endless hours of training in the form of memory engrams.

I won't deny that a team of proper Cybran Commandoes would have been a whole lot sharper, but they did the best they could under the circumstances. In the weeks leading up to today's battle, I had used the little fabrication capacity I had to produce a series of "micro scouts." Crude flying horseshoe-shaped machines that had moved into the enemy perimeter at night and burrowed themselves into the sand recording enemy movements by passive sensors. Half a dozen of them were located around the base.

Using the information they had sent back to the Quantum Network the infiltrators had lain in wait for the patrolling drones that made up the outer part of the airbase perimeter. When the drones approached a Commando with the best score in the training simulations had raised a rifle and fired an engineering dart freshly forged by the weapon's _magazine_. Before the Tau drone could even recognise the incoming attack the small engineering suit in the dart had started to interface with the machines primitive mind. The Tau operators in the armoured command bunker 30 kilometres away did not notice a thing as the drone's systems were subverted. I pulled all data from the machine, adding its IFF database to my own and uploaded a ghoast program to the Tau network. In the eyes of the inexperienced Tau overseer, (A Shas-Saal-Pol if you're interested,) nothing of note happened. The system seemed to stutter for the barest moment. He thought nothing of it. The drones were due for maintenance soon, and he had another hour left on duty before he could hand over the responsibility and finally get some sleep.

Machines in the Infinite war used Quantum Entanglement Keys isolation to keep their networks secure. Requiring you to hack each unit individually if you wanted to gain control of them. The Tau system had no such restrictions. Like a pathogen spreading through the bloodstream the ghost program spread through the Tau data net. Within 102 seconds every patrolling drone was infected. Sitting in my command vehicle, a modified Mantis assault bot I sent a command through my implants and at a mental stroke blinded the electronic eyes of the drones and automated gun turrets that served as outer perimeter guards of the airbase. With that first obstacle cleared I sent another signal. With our infantry moving out ahead of us as a vanguard the rest of the attack force moved in. Our target was a point 15 kilometres from the airbase proper. At that range, the Medusa self-propelled artillery could prepare to shell the base. A single Hunter and the self-propelled AA would stay with it, whilst the rest of us moved on.

Watching through the cybernetic eyes of the Commandos I saw the first of the Tau die. A section of eight Fire warriors patrolling a kilometre from the start of the airbase proper. They walked like professionals. Weapons at the ready and heads on a swivel. But when they saw the two dozen darkly armoured figures emerge from the pre-dawn gloom they hesitated. They were inexperienced I was sure. Fresh soldiers who had been sent to this quiet place to finish their training and so release more experienced soldiers for service elsewhere. They didn't have a chance.

Aside from _Cro'ps's _tribe, I had recruited my little army from half a dozen bands of the Tribeless. The absolute dregs of society on this miserable world. Some of them had been opponents of integration and had been thrown out by their tribes to gain the favour of the Tau whilst others had committed genuine crimes and been punished accordingly. The Tau had for one reason or another in each of their cases refused to help them when they needed it. Now they had a chance to strike back, and they embraced with a vengeance.

Four Sanction Flechette rifles came up and fired. Their self-guided graviton accelerated darts crossing the distance between the Tau and the Commandos at just under the speed of sound for this world's atmosphere, lest the sonic "_crack_" a supersonic munition give away the attackers too early. When the rounds struck the micro engineering suit buried in their tips activated, disassembling the molecules of the armour in front of them atom by atom. The darts passed through the hole in the armour and the second stage of the weapon, a massive flood of gamma radiation was released cooking the body of the Tau inside. Wordlessly the Tau fell to the ground. Ordinarily, their vitals flatlining would have the base go on alert automatically, but my ghost program had already spread to other systems as well. The biometric data that the command centre was receiving was a loop of earlier in the patrol.

The infiltration force had a single primary role. My earlier scouting using passive sensors had identified the main Tau communication centre for the base. As I had guessed the Tau long-range communication system was on a separate system to the rest of the Tau network. A wise move, as my subversion of the drone defence network, had shown. I could have just blown it apart with artillery fire, but I didn't want to do that. It would look suspicious if a Tau airbase suddenly stopped transmitting. However, if I could gain access to the communication centre, then I would be able to pull off my trick with the patrols biometrics on a far grander scale. With a little luck, the rest of the Tau would never know that a battle was being fought at all. They would find out eventually of course but hopefully, it would take them long enough for us to disengage. Additionally, I would gain access to a vast amount of data storage which I could then analyse at a later date. I needed to know how far I was from human civilised space if I was ever to bring attention to the threat posed to humans by the Tau Empire.

The doors to the Tau communication centre's main operations room opened quietly. A couple of the Earth and Fire caste on duty glanced up at the door disinterestedly. They were already turning back to their consoles by the time it took them to realise their mistake. Then the killing started.

Sanction Flechette rifles spat their pointed munitions. Proton launchers fired projectiles that broke apart enemies on the subatomic level and low yield laser rifles boiled away the flesh and the blood and heated bone until it exploded. The Fire caste members scrambled desperately to bring their long and unwieldy pulse rifles up and to bear on the enemy. By the time it took the first of them to do so the dozen attackers had killed three-quarters of them. Only one of them managed to return fire. His shot caught a Commando in the chest, who had been too swept up in the revelry of slaughter to listen to his newly acquired instincts screaming at him to take cover.

The shot hurled him backwards, but mercifully the Structural Integrity Field of his armour managed to hold and prevent his internal organs from being pulped. His fellow attackers blasted the Tau responsible into a cloud of vaporised blood and bone. Whilst the Earth caste technicians, paralysed by such brutal violence were being hunted down, a trio of Commandoes made their way to the communications systems.

One pulled out a Universal Machine Interface Unit from a pocket and inserted it into the main communications desk. It adjusted its size and shape until it merged perfectly with the input socket. After twenty seconds it chimed a positive response. The system was theirs. One of the black armoured infiltrators sent a message and the true slaughter began.

"This is it, follow your orders and remember the training. Use emotional suppression algorithms if you have to. Set time acceleration to times 10. This is Captain Richard Cain. May Operation Desert Rat now commence!" We sprinted forwards at 60 standard Terran kilometres an hour.

Ordinarily, a Commander's forces would be entirely automated. Relatively simplistic machine minds receiving their orders via the same Quantum Network that allowed them to effectively operate without supply lines. When I had arrived on this world, I had had nothing, but the pilots suit on my back and a handful of machines on the verge of a catastrophic failure of their Structural Integrity Fields. The Quantum infrastructure I had managed to build was bearly able to handle the strain of supplying these machines with the Power and Mass they needed to function. There was no _quantum bandwidth_ to send the messages that would control the machines with. That meant that unusually each of the machines operating today had an actual biological crew. Riding into battle with actual living people fighting alongside you is a strange feeling.

Red seven, our Medusa artillery piece, raised it's barrel and fired. Its first three shots were aimed at the Orca transports lying on the landing field with their bellies full of troops. Within half a second of each other, the first and third shells struck. First came the EMP charge detonated just before impact, to scramble enemy electronics in the area. Then when the shell was about to hit it activated its neutron accelerator. The nucleus of the atoms making up the Tau armour was blasted apart by the high-speed subatomic particles. The armour began to break apart in spontaneous nuclear fission. Adding to the devastation. When the shells did finally hit, it struck armour so weekend it penetrated completely through the upper deck and fully detonated inside the crew compartment.

Viewing reality at one-tenth of normal speed is a truly beautiful thing. The way sand is kicked up by the footfalls of a mech, the way that plasma is formed from air resistance as artillery shells tear their way through the atmosphere. The crisscrossing trail of lasers caused as their passage heating the gasses in the air to the point of ionisation. Streams of plasma crisscrossing the battlefield, like the webs of some terrible technological spider's web. The small induced nuclear explosions consuming the Tau dropships was particularly beautiful. Silhouetted against the rising sun as it was.

Our attack force cut its way into the enemy airbase. The Sky Slammer AA missile system added its firepower to the assault, switching to ground targeting mode and using the operators cybernetically enhanced reflexes to guide the shots on target via remote control. In the first thirty seconds of the attack, she killed 500 Tau by diving her Nanite Missiles into one of the buildings we had tentatively identified as a barracks accommodation. The resulting swarm of devouring nanites consumed the Tau even as they tried to arm themselves for battle. Watching through hacked security cameras, I saw Fire Warriors blasting away at the oncoming swarm of nanoscopic killers on full auto before being dragged down by them and devoured. Its operator was a woman called _Jon'kl_ who had lost her son in the massacre of _Cro'ps tribe. _You could hear her cackling over the communication channels as she fired a flash fabricated missile after flash fabricated missile. In the end, I reached through our network and using my authority as the highest ranked individual present, forcibly activated emotional suppression systems. We couldn't afford any mistakes.

The two Hunters that had come with us busied themselves with the elimination of the panicking foot targets. Earth caste technicians, Fire caste soldiers and Air caste pilots all trying to make sense of the situation. The light pulse lasers slung underneath the nose of the Hunters were pitiful by the standards of the Infinite War, but on infantry they were murderous. Tau a dozen meters from the point of impact were simply evaporated as their clothing caught fire. Those twenty meters away collapsed to the ground clutching eyes that had become unbearably dry and thrashing as their skin blistered. As for those struck dead on not even ashes remained.

The two Mantis Assualt Bots, one piloted by my self the other _Cro'ps _focused on the bigger targets. A partially disassembled Hammerhead gunship in an open hanger was blasted apart by me, rupturing the hydrogen fuel tank being used to refuel it and creating a blast so big it consumed the neighbouring hangers as well. Together via our Cybran implants, we coordinated our fire over the Neural Net. Never striking a target that the other was already trying to destroy. No shots were wasted on enemies that were already as good as dead.

I was playing havoc on the Tau communications channels. A dozen automated attempts had already been made in the first minute before frantic Tau communications operators in other parts of the base attempted to get a message out to the rest of the planet. I killed it with my control of the communications system. I did other things as well. My access to the Tau systems was not perfect. There were still some systems simply beyond my ability to connect to. None the less I could still stack the deck in our favour. I reactivated the sensors on the bases various drones and automated gun turrets but modified their IFF. Through the cameras of a hundred different machines, I saw Tau cut down in their hundreds as their former mechanical allies shot them in the back. I was also filling the local coms network with static and incoherent shouting. Through my various feeds, I saw Tau sergeants and officers reduced to screaming and hand signals to try and regain control.

My Commandos were also busy. As we began the attack, I made out at least two dozen dead Tau soldiers on the outer perimeter, killed before they raise the alarm. Half the force had attacked the coms centre whilst the other half, using crude visual cloaking generators they had spread through the base planting explosives. Those explosives now detonated. An entire Cadra of Fire Warriors was obliterated when an ammunition depot exploded consuming every single on them. Four bunkers set up to give Fire Warriors a safe shooting position against an enemy attack were erased. In the case of one of them after it had been packed to capacity by Fire Warrior's whose eyes were still bleary from lack of sleep. After that, they joined the attack in a more conventional sense. Picking off officers and NCO's. The Tau had obligingly made the job easier by painting their helmets a distinctive bone white.

As the attack continued I multitasked with the skill that only a Cybran can possess. Identifying high priority targets and transmitting their locations to the artillery in the rear. Checking on the progress of the rest of the attack and issuing new orders accordingly. Updating the battle damage prediction algorithms based on what I saw of the enemy armours performance against our weapons. All of it was done in a fraction of a second.

At moments like this, I honestly could not fathom how anyone could live without Cybran cranial implants. It must be like trying to live life with a misfiring engine for a brain.

It was ninety seconds past since Operation Desert Rat began when we encountered enemy resistance that was actually some danger. Until that point, we had been contending with nothing but small arms fire. My retina display showed that none of the machines in our attack force had had its Structural Integrity Field fall below 95% The Tau rifles leaving little more than scorch marks on the armoured hulls.

Then one of the Hunters, busily cutting down a group of fleeing enemy infantry took a hit from something that cut its integrity field down to 70%. Its pilot started to panic, and again I had to use the Emotional Regulation Software to calm her. As I did that I bit the bullet and increased my time acceleration to 1/20th of normal time and started scanning the area for our mysterious attacker. The added mental strain would mean there was hell to pay later but for now, it was necessary.

There! A trail of superheated air caused by the friction between the atmosphere and the projectile. Whatever it was it was lurking behind the control tower at the far end of the airbase.

"_Cro'ps _with me, we have to take that thing out." I transmitted cross the Neural Network

He gave a grunt of compliance and our two machines set off at flank speed whilst the Hunters continued their butchery of the infantry. Alien infantry scattered before us as we surged forwards. As we advanced we ruthlessly raked their ranks when the opportunity offered itself. If the Light weapons of the Hunter were devastating to infantry, then the twin-linked heavy pulse lasers were simply cruel. Where their shots struck the ground the hardened surface evaporated in ten meters in any direction.

As we were approaching the control tower, an aircraft that my captured IFF information referred to as a Baracuda fighter left in its hanger and unable to launch because of the chaos of the attack tried to fire its weapons through the open doors of the hanger. I managed to avoid the worst of the damage by bending my mechs legs and "crouching" so that the majority of the weapons fire, including a very dangerous Ion beam if my sensors were correct, passed harmlessly over my machines head. Together _Cro'ps _and I riddled the machine with so much pulse fire that it was as though some vindictive god had used a magnifying glass to burn it away.

With that out of the way, we resumed our charge for the control tower. Half a kilometre from it I got my first glimpse of the enemy we were hunting. According to my new IFF, it was a Broadside battlesuit emerging from around the side of the tower. About half the hight of a Hunter with a humanoid body and twin railguns mounted on its shoulders. Without hesitation, both _Cro'ps _and I raked it with pulse laser fire. The machines boxy head was vaporised instantly taking the majority of the enemies pilots sensor equipment with it. On instinct, the enemy opened fire with his railguns. Firing blindly in our vague direction. One of the shots went wide, but the other struck the ground in front of me with such force that it gouged out a fifty-meter trench. Impressive firepower for such as small design I noted. The second fusillade from our lasers must have breached some kind of fuel source because the machine blasted itself apart with incredible force.

As soon as that happened, the other two Broadsides emerged from the other side of the tower. Before we could act they fired their railguns at us. There's something terrible about watching a railgun shot coming towards you with reflexes bosted far enough see it but not to act on it. Even with the inertial compensators installed in the machine's cockpit I still felt like a hammer blow had been dealt to my stomach. My structural integrity dropped to 61%. I snarled out a curse and opened fire. Not at the head or the railguns but at the six shot missile launcher mounted in place of hands. These had been empty on the first Broadside I had engaged. Presumably, because it was due for maintenance before we attacked. These two were clearly not. My blasts detonated the machines ammunition and hurled it into its neighbour. They both fell together in a crumpled mass which _Cro'ps _and I took no shame in using as target practice.

As our fighting ended I heard something strange on the communications net. Cheering. I turned my machine around. At the other end of the runway, the last of the Tau forces on base had just been obliterated. Men and women were clambering on top of destroyed aircraft and logistical vessels. Thrusting their weapons into the air and chanting in half a dozen different dialects. Singing to their ancestors, chanting to the spirits thous who lived on this world believed guided all things, some of them shouting just for the sheer hell of it. I hadn't lost a single one of them to the enemy. I allowed a few moments of revelry before cutting in.

As I watched my troops busied themselves collecting anything that could serve as an energy source. Fuel tankers containing hydrogen, air to air missiles with plasma warheads and even the magazines of Tau pulse rifles. As they did so I monitored the Tau's worldwide communication network. There was no increase in communication chatter. For now at least the Tau seemed completely unaware of what was going on, believing the fabricated status updates from the communication centre about the situation on base.

I moved my way over to the pile of energy source. This was the true goal of the mission. The information that I had gained might be incredibly useful but the potential reward of this was infinitely more impactful. It had taken me months to repair my few surviving units with my pilot's suits fabricators. If I had calculated the energy requirements correctly, however, I would not be forced to rely on such a inefficient system. When the last of it was added, I activated the engineering drone on my machine and had it move over to the pile. With a sigh of anxiety, I began the work. Crimson beams played over the high energy content objects. Breaking them down at the subatomic level and using some of the power from that to restructure the atom by adding or replacing subatomic particles. My hands were dripping with sweet every moment. Then as quickly as it had started, it was over. The fule was gone. Replaced by a four-wheeled rover with a single fin standing up from its back half. In my ears, I heard the words, "emergency fabrication of T1 Mobile Engineering unit complete, awaiting instructions." I sat in my cockpit and _smiled_.

"What do you mean its gone!? It's an airbase! It can't just disappear." Noa snaped.

"I mean that its gone _bureaucrat,_ there's nothing left apart from bombed out buildings and corpses. A lot of weaponry can't be accounted for either. " Shas Vre Oml replied. Now transmitting from inside an Orca transport on a return flight from surveying the satiation for herself.

"What could have done this?" he asked feeling so weary suddenly.

"Unknown. Regardless we need to start taking precautions. I have given an order for all human tribes not yet in Tau built settlements to be relocated to them. That will make our job far easier when it comes to tracking down the enemy. "

"Now see here, I am the Governor of t-"

"Correction you were the Governor. Now there is a combat situation on the planet. I hold the most authority. Until we can be sure that this enemy force has been obliterated, we must treat every _native_ with suspicion. If you want to make your self-useful, I suggest that you start the work on building more settlements."

"What makes you think they were even human? The Orks have never-"

"Are you honestly suggesting that Orks would be able to land without us noticing them? Look. Maybe these attackers are natives. Maybe they are some unknown species. Maybe they are from the Imperium, sent to sow chaos in our rear territory. Whatever the reason it doesn't matter. We will do this properly, for the greater good." She finished the transmission with a salute and then shut it down before he could respond.

Cro'ps found me in my new office two days after the raid on the airbase. Ever since we had managed to fabricate the Engineer we had gone through a massive expansion. The total volume of the underground base had increased ten times over. Much of that space was occupied by Quantum Power Generators and Mass Fabricators. It had been somewhat galling to see a room that would have taken a month for my pilot's suit's fabricator to build completed in minutes. Not that I didn't have bigger problems on my hands than envy.

"Hows the work going, _Honoured Elder?"_ His face twitched into the faintest of smiles. In this world the difference between being a leader and an Elder was non-existent. Naturally, when the men under my command had found out that at 19 I was younger than many of them there had been a fair few jokes like that.

I glanced up at him from the freshly built desk I was sitting behind. I doubt he needed a facial pattern analysation software to realise my mood. The smile fell from his face, and he moved closer to me.

"What's wrong sir?"

"I…I've been looking over the data we stole from the Tau." With a mental command, the emitters in the desk activated and presented the Tau's understanding of the situation of the galaxy. Nation states I had never heard of sprouted up in star systems I didn't think had any human population in my own time. "More specifically what they know about the rest of the galaxy. I… I don't recognise a single thing about this place. I think... I think that the Quantum rift might have sent me forward in time! Based on the position of the stars I think it might be something like 36,000 years." My hands were shaking. i remember that clearly, the shock of never being able to back home again was starting to get to me.

A moment of silence fell between us. Neither of us willing to break it.

"What do we do?" he finally asked an unreadable expression on his face.

I took a deep breath. "Where ever we are, whatever time this is is irrelevant. The enemy is in front of us. We fight or we die." I replied.

He nodded, held out his hand and gave mine a firm shake. "We fight."


	2. Chapter 2

15,000 meters, good visibility, this was the sweet spot, the altitude where the air resistance gave way, and a craft seemed to just float through the sky. There was an intermittent wind from the north-west that would extend flight time by a few minutes. Kor'La Zro gazed out through his cockpits 360-degree camera view. The desert stretched out below him, almost as far as the eye could see. It was only in the very north that he could make out the beginnings of a mountain range. The _Peaks of Heaven_ if he remembered the conversation with one of the Human auxiliaries correctly. 5000 meters below him schools of Remora Drones flited above the landscape, searching for the elusive enemy. They were out there, somewhere….

"Three you're drifting!" barked the voice of Kor,UI Zole, the leader of the eight craft formation. Zro felt his adrenaline spike as he frantically cast his eyes over the instrumentation display. He was drifting, by three meters. He acknowledged and corrected, a pang of irritation rising inside him. Kor,Ui Zole had never been an easy superior to work with, always demanding the best from the young Kor,La under his command. In the 13 days since the attack on the airbase, he had become unbearable. Snapping at any who seemed to not live up to his standards, which seemed to be everyone he came across. The other day Zro had seen him ranting at a pair of Earth Caste technicians because the fuel bowsers being used to surface the squadrons machines had apparently been parked too close to the vehicles, violating some obscure guideline that Zro had never heard of. How the Earth Caste were meant to avoid that when their home airbase had had its total complement of machines doubled almost overnight, he had no idea.

Things had been hectic since the attack on airbase Anor'the. The Fire cast had moved fast. Rounding up human tribes and relocating them to hastily built camps. There had been violence. Many of the Humans had been assured that they could live on their own lands for as long as they wanted. Now the Tau seemed to be breaking that promise. Most of the resistance was symbolic, chanting and hurling insults before the Elders of the tribe managed to get control over there people. From conversations with some of the Shas La on base, a small but significant number of Human tribes had reacted much more violently. News of the resulting one-sided slaughter seemed to have spread unnaturally fast because a noticeable number of Humans had simply disappeared. Their villages abandoned overnight.

Now the Fire cast had declared the relocation compleat. Squadrons of Tau drones were patrolling, searching for the unknown enemy. Above them, flights of Baracuda's fighters, Tiger Shark bombers and Orca transports patroled. Ready to swoop down on the enemy once they were located. The orders were clear. The relocation of the Humans was complete. Anyone detected by the Drones outside of the settlements was fair game. Zro wasn't too sure about that but he supposed it made sense. The Humans had been offered the greater good and had chosen to reject it. What had to be done was unpleasant but necessary.

The eight Tau Barracuda fighters were flying in two, four machine formations. Arranged into the shape of a diamond. The formation that most species with experience of air combat gravitated towards after a certain amount of combat experience. Naturally, Zro's partner in his part of the formation would have to be Kor,Ui Zole.

Zole called out a course correction and the flight's machines responded accordingly. Zro glanced around his canopy's camera display. More because he was bored than because he expected to notice anything important. After all his scope was clear and there was nothing on the communication channels.

Which was when he saw them. Four black and crimson machines diving down on them. They were menacing things, with swept forward wings that ended in vicious points. They were coming so steep and fast that it would break apart a Baracuda.

This wasn't happening. This couldn't be happening. This was how it happened in dreams, in nightmares. He was so shocked that his warning was almost too late.

"Break! Break! Bandits above!" He threw his machine to the right and fired his vector thrust at maximum, eating into his fuel reserves. He felt his gravity armour struggling to prevent the G forces from pulping his relatively thin and frail Air cast body.

The Tau formation descended into chaos. From his four-plane formation, Zole was the only other pilot to react quick enough. The other two members of the formation were ripped apart as the unknown fighters fired some kind of nose mounted twin linked particle cannon. Their machines were literally split in half as they flew into the streams. The two halves splitting apart from each other and falling away before internal explosions atomised them.

The other flight suffered less. It lost its leader who's machine suffered a containment break of its Ion cannon's fuel cells, but the remaining three machines speed through the blizzard of fire from the two enemy machines attacking them unscathed.

Chaos erupted on the communications net. He could hear Zole screaming at them, cursing them for fools, for neglecting their visual scanning, for allowing them to be bounced. He wanted to scream that it wasn't their fault. That their sensors should have warned them what was coming, and that Zole and been flight and section leader. That he was as much to blame as the rest of them. But he didn't. partially because he suspected it would only add to the confusion and mostly because he was trying to not die.

One of the bandits was on him. They were in a turning fight. And he was losing. That shouldn't be happening. The unknown attacker had dived down on them, hadn't it? Logic dictated it would have too much speed to stay behind his machine, it would overshoot him as he turned and then he could riddle it with fire. Except as soon as he had hit his airbrakes and heard his crafts antigravity systems low murmur raise to a high-pitched whining the enemy machine had matched speed with him. Even worse it was turning slightly harder than he was.

His fingers danced over the joystick, arming his eight wing-mounted missiles and the two wing mounted drone controlled burst cannons. The burst cannons swung backwards to face his rear. "That's right you little Castles1 one, get closer!" he snarled."

"Target not found." His weapons system informed him in infuriatingly calm tones.

"What? It's right fucking there!" Frantically he overloaded the system and manually triggered the weapons. The enemy machine flew straight into the twin streams of blue plasma fire. Zro let out a cry of satisfaction only to stare in disbelief as the unknown machine emerged from the resulting cloud of superheated air seemingly untouched. The image of it filled his camera screens. He found his eyes drawn to the twin cannons jutting out from under where the cockpit must surely have been. Fear gripped him.

Kor,Ui Zole tore in from 3'oclock and below the enemy machine with one engine disabled and all weapons firing. Unable to acquire a missile lock for the burst cannons he had slaved them to his ion cannons targeting system, unlike Zro he had also launched his missiles. The enemy fighter flew straight into the maelstrom of fire. For a moment it seemed to hang in space and time completely untouched. Then the crimson and black armour tour itself apart, its death was so violent that there seemed to almost be a force inside the machine doing the bulk of the destruction. As though whatever technologies gave it flight and such durability were finally rebelling against it.

"Are you alright Kor'La?"

"I, I think so. Sir your engine!"

"It's fine. Got peppered with fragments when those, _things_ took out one of ours."

He glanced at his display. The 3D display was still obstinately free of enemy contacts. Showing only the Tau machines twisting and corkscrewing through the air. Of the eight that had started the battle three had been destroyed instantly. Another had been destroyed soon after resulting in the fragments that had damaged Zole's machine. That left just four machines, scattered and in the case of one of them damaged against three enemies of unknown capabilities. He could see the enemy machines. They were gunning in hard on the survivors of the other Flight. One of the Tau pilots panicked and in an attempt to climb and allow his enemy to undershoot him stalled his craft. The enemy machine, displaying a reaction time that put any Air cast pilot Zro had met to shame copied the manoeuvre, demonstrating the same unnerving ability to change velocity rapidly that had nearly killed Zro it stood in its tail and pulled up, firing its weapons as it did so. The unfortunate Tau pilot was blasted apart before he could cry for assistance.

_Regrettably_, for the unknown enemy, his manoeuvre had left him in a perfect position for Zro to sweep in and rake the enemy machine with a three seconds blast from the Ion cannon. His heads-up display screamed a warning about weapon temperature. Instinctively he dumped his weapon coolant. That cooled the weapon enough to fire but gave him only a second of sustained fire.

A garbled scream came over the communication network Another Tau machine fell burning from the sky. Its pilot was trapped in its cockpit. There were flames in the cockpit. Zro breathed a sigh of relief when Zole used the command override and shut off the communications channel.

Now it was two against two. Both sides formed up. Zole's machine was sluggish with only a single engine but his response to Zro's suggestion that he should disengage was filled with enough expletives to make Zro laugh despite the rising tension as the four machines tore towards each other.

His missiles still obstinately refused to acquire a target lock. His drone controlled pulse cannons were no good either. Snarling a curse that he was not sure was directed at the Earth cast technicians who maintained his machine or the enemy. Instead, he slaved them to his Ion cannons aiming system and called up the holographic sights. The distance between the two groups of aircraft rapidly dwindled.

"When I give the word. Hit you vector thrust. You go high, I go low." Said Kor,Ui Zole

A heartbeat later. "Now!"

Zro poured every last iota of manoeuvring fuel he had left into the manoeuvre. This was what the Fire cast referred to as the killing blow he was sure. The single pivotal moment that would decide the battle. Zole shot was of course perfect. His target wasted its volley by raking empty air whilst burst cannon and ion cannon shots overwhelmed whatever technology gave them their remarkable durability. Zro's fire was less successful. It splashed across the enemy machines right wing but failed to inflict significant enough damage to destroy it. The enemy machine banked to the right and started to line itself up on Zole's machine, which because of the damage to its engine was struggling to stay airborne. Its sole surviving engine was starting to misfire.

Zro cursed and tried to line up a shot. The crosiers fell across the enemy machine and he triggered his Ion cannon. Nothing happened. The last burst from his Ion cannon had turned some component of his main weapon into slag. He fell in behind the enemy machine and using manual aim strafed it with his burst cannon. The enemy machine displayed the same infuriating durability that its fellows had also possessed. Seemingly ignorant of the volley of burst cannon fire striking its engine housing it fired its weapons. Zole displayed his skill at piloting by triggering his vector trust at the last possible moment. Instead of obliterating his machines engine compartment, the burst of particle cannon fire from the enemy machine _merely_ erased his left wing. As his machine spiralled out of control Zole punched out, his cockpit detached, firing its thrusters to clear itself from the enemy machine and activating its parachute.

One on one thought Zro as he tried to stay on the enemy's tail as it began to turn to attack him. Once again it simply seemed to be able to turn at a rate that was impossible to for his machine to replicate. His burst cannons ceased fire, their ammunition expended and their barrels heated to the point of turning to slag.

Then something happened. The machine ceased its turning. As its path straightened out and it continued on a straight path Zro pulled up behind it. He activated his air to air missiles and then set them to manual fire, a tactic only used when engaging ground vehicles. He centred his crosshairs on the enemy machine. Then the unknown machine exploded.

/

"What happened?" asked _Cro'ps_ as the last icon donating the four strong flight of Prowler fighters disappeared from the tactical display.

"It means that "_something"_ is "_fucking"_ with the Quantum Realm, weakening our signal to such a point that the automatic safeties in our units believed that the Commander of our forces has been killed and his units must execute self-destruct protocols to protect themselves from capture by the enemy. It means that we can't just bury our enemies in tidal waves of unmanned tanks and aircraft. Not without a human in a war machine nearby to provide a Quantum Signature to prevent the self-destruct protocols from activating."

"Can't you override that, your _tribe_ seems to give its members a lot of autonomy."

"No I can't fucking override it. For the same reason that I can't walk on water, without augments at least. It's so hard-wired into every file of our units programming. Damit. I was sure our modifications would work." I drummed my fingers on the desk. _Cro'ps _was the only person present physically but there were a dozen others attending the meeting by the virtual conference. I glanced around at them until I found the one I wanted. A bald woman who had chosen to adopt the more visual aspects of Cybran augmentation. Namely a crisscrossing spiders web of crimson circuitry.

"_Rek;'la_ clean up the area, would you? Destroy the surviving Tau aircraft and then implement sanitation plan five. I want there to be no wreckage for the enemy to analyse." She nodded and a moment later her virtual reality projection disappeared from the room.

"As for the rest of you. It looks like we're implement offensive plan Delta/ three. Make sure your forces include more than one human soldier or the machines will self-destruct. And remember I want prisoners. If I find out any of you have been ignoring offers of surrenders there will be consequences, none of you wants to see what it looks like if someone removes a Cybrans implants _forcibly_. Dismissed!"

They nodded and one by one left the conference call, their holographic projections disappearing.

When the last of them were gone I reclined in my chair and steepled my hands in front of me. Scenarios ran through my mind at the speed that only a Cybran's mind could achieve. Something was wrong. The Quantum realm was disturbed in this time. The safety features that had destroyed the last the of the Prowlers was something that would never have bothered a Commander in the Infinite war. But here? Something was disturbing it. If a unit lost its connection via the Quantum Relm to its Commander, then it would destroy itself to prevent capture. Something was causing that to happen here if there was no human presence nearby to the units.

My small army had expanded since the raid on the airbase, but it was still no match in numbers for the Enemy. In a fair fight, they would bury me in ordinance and war machines. Luckily I was a Cybran. We don't fight fair, we fight to win. In front of me, my retina display burst to life. Information of a dozen conflict zones as formations of war machines lead by human piloted machines started to engage the Tau forces who had been deluded by their leaders lies into thinking they were the hunters and not the hunted.

In the corner of my vision, a display for the total available Quantum bandwidth to command units remotely continued to fluctuate. This was going to make things more difficult.

/

The atmosphere in the command centre had started out tense. Por'Vre Noa had insisted on being present, he and a small clutter of Water cast bureaucrats huddled in the corner, scrupulously taking notes of the various pre-battle reports from the various Tau forces as they made ready to deploy.

Shas Vre Oml had done her best to ignore him. Normally a Fire cast with the rank of Vre would be deployed on the field commanding a Cadre, or perhaps a Contingent of several Cadres. Instead, she was effectively the leader of the Fire cast Command on planet. She had better things to do than worry about bureaucrats hurt feelings.

Neither the senior Earth cast or Air cast members on planet were in attendance. Fio'Vre Kras was busy with his fellow technicians, getting as many machines as he possibly could into fighting conditions. The garrison had been operating at the tempo of a peacetime deployment. Inevitably as the tempo of operations had increased, first with the forced resettlement and then with the large-scale operation to find and destroy the as yet unknown enemy some machines had suffered malfunctions.

Kor'Vre Sly was located on the words singular orbital station. Little more than a facility to store mined minerals for ease of transport rapidly converted into an orbital launch platform for the best Air cast pilots on planet. The loss of an entire airbase with its attendant squadrons had shaken the usually cool and collected Air caste veteran. Some airbases had been abandoned on his order, to allow for a greater concentration of forces.

All told Operation Mont'Swev, (Killing Sweep.) had been planned as a large-scale offensive. Upwards of 80% of all Tau combat assets were deployed. Large formations of Remora stealth drones were prowling ahead of the main forces, probing the ground with Radar, Lindar, acoustics and Magnetic Imaging. They would find and hurras the enemy, tying them down for the main forces to smash them into dust.

Then things had started to go wrong.

First had come interference on the communications channels, unexplained static on the line. It had cleaned itself up after a few moments, and Fir'Vre Kras's voice had come over the command channel to report a faulty component had been discovered and replaced.

Then hell had erupted.

Half a dozen Earth cast communications officers had started shouting at once, reporting engagement between Tau forces and unknown hostiles. The main holographic display in the command centre flickered and then started to update itself. As contradictory reports from a dozen different engagement zones poured in it fizzled and flickered before freezing. A dozen airbases and staging posts were reporting artillery fire from unknown sources. The guards at several of the resettlement camps were frantically reporting attacks from within and without.

Most ominously of all several facilities had simply dropped off the data net completely.

/

Kor'Vre Sly took only a moment to survey the unfolding catastrophe before responding with the swiftness expected of a fighter pilot.

"Launch all craft. Double-check point defence systems, I don't what anything getting through. Get me a channel to planetside command!"

"Unable Kor'Vre, all channels are jammed!"

Suddenly the bright blue lighting of the orbital command centre was replaced with the pulsing crimson of emergency power. Kor'Vre Sly felt the familiar sensation vertigo that comes from suddenly passing from one gravity field to another. The Gravity Plates beneath him had lost power.

/

Contrary to what the Tau commanders might have been seeing on their displays, they were not facing the tidal wave of enemy forces. Even after a fortnight of diligent work I had been unable to stabilise the Quantum Network my units were used to the point where I could deploy more than a hundred and fifty-one machines. That included the Mass Fabricators, power generators and underground factories that I was using to build my forces. On top of that for some reason, the data of my higher tier units was corrupted. Meaning could only field the most basic fighting units available to a Cybran commander.

If I was some stubborn headed fool of a UEF commander, who believed that the only solution to a problem was the application of raw, unadulterated brute force, or an Aeon commander who was guided more by scripture than by good common scene then I might have been in trouble. As it was, I really had to adjust my strategies.

Whilst my various intrusions into the Tau's command and control system, made possible by backdoors created when I had first hacked the system, played havoc with their forces my own were striking at various key targets. Ammunition and supply depots, repair workshops and the like. Small bands of humans had infiltrated some of the Resettlement camps and were in the process of launching a series of riots against the camp's guards, who's strength had been bled white to provide troops for the Tau offensive.

I had also identified key individuals in the Tau military who held leadership positions, or who were eligible to inherit command if their superiors were lost. In orbit, a Commando team, carried by a heavily modified Skyhook transport, was assaulting the facility that housed the commander of all aerospace assets on the planet. The commander of the ground forces and the head of the civilian government were also being targeted. Obligingly they had decided to position themselves in the same room of the same building.

/

Twelve Zeus attack bombers flew at one and a half times the speed of sound towards the Tau command centre. They were flying low, below the Tau Radar and Lindar network that their implants helpfully added to their vision by augmented reality displays., weaving in and out of the sand dunes and gullies that lead toward the compound. Normally a Cybran might accelerate their mental capacities to times ten of normal processing speed. For this attack, the four human pilots amongst the attack force were operating on twenty times normal reaction time. Their machines had been modified prior to launching the attack, captured files showed that the Tau base had a formidable AA network. The Tau would hopefully be taken by surprise by the initial attack but calculations had placed the odds of surviving a second attack run in the face of retaliator Tau fire at close to zero. For that reason, each machine carried a ten tone bomb crudely attached to impromptu hardpoints on each wing. Flying the machines like this without them would have merely been dangerous. Flying with them was nearly suicidal. Even with all the advanced autopilot software and reflexes twenty times faster than any normal human could bost the piolets were only just managing to maintain control of their machine.

The first the Tau knew of the oncoming attack was when Fire warriors on the outer perimeter were bowled over by the air pressure of the bombers passing merely ten meters above their heads. Eardrums burst and targeting cameras in combat helmets cracked. Frantically the Shas Ui in charge of the patrol tried to raise the alarm, but his Com bead had been broken by the overpressure. He reached to his equipment belt and fired a warning flare.

By the time the base had seen and responded to the flair, the first bombs were dropping.

Half their bombload was directed at the command centre, identifiable from its location at the centre of a nexus of electromagnetic chatter. The rest were for various targets of opportunity. By the time the first Tau fire from manually controlled Burst cannons had started a thousand Tau had already been obliterated. One of the three tone Neutron bombs plunged directly into the command enter and detonated, destroying the majority of the Tau's upper command echelons in a single stroke. A dozen Orca transports, full to the brim with troops designated to act as a strategic reserve were obliterated in a moment. A Trio of Skyray missile gunship, their Seeker Missiles sitting impotently on their racks for want of reliable targeting data were consumed in the explosion of a fuel dump. Panicking crews could only sit in their machines helplessly as the internal temperature rose and systems failed. One lucky crew died quickly when their missiles detonated. The rest were cooked alive in their machines.

One of the Zeus's was brought down by a Hammerhead gunship, whos commander managed to align up his railgun on the oncoming machine and blasted it out of the sky. He didn't have time to celebrate. The burning smouldering remains of the machine, breaking apart internally from the overloading of its Structural Integrity field smashed into him. The resulting ball of wreckage carved a trench a quarter of a mile long in the desert sand. Then as quickly as it had begun, it was over. The remaining Cybran bombers were disappearing off into the night. Leaving behind a trail of devastation so complete it would take the Tau weeks to identify some of the dead.

/

Kor'Vre Sly checked the magazine on his Pulse Pistol and tried to steady his aim using a nearby console. Around him the last surviving members of the Orbitals assigned personal did the same. The unknown attackers had, over the preceding half an hour butchered the two hundred Fire warriors assigned as station-side security. Now he was reduced to the two dozen Earth and Air cast in this room. Their weapons were trembling, partly from fear and partly from unfamiliarity. All Tau assigned to a military posting received some weapons training but it was regarded as a formality for all but the Fire cast.

The camera feed to outside the blast doors of the command centre ceased transmitting. A few moments later the "clunk" of something being placed against its surface could be heard by all. Fingers tensed on triggers. Any moment now…

A Matter Reclamation breaching charge placed on the floor of the station above them detonated. So did one placed on the ceiling of the floor below. As the Tau were trying to process the changing situation Synaps grenades were hurled into the room from above and below. When they detonated Tau cried out as there own nervous systems rebelled. Por'Vre Noa had been partially sheltered by the console he was sheltering behind. His right arm hung limply by his side, but his left still held the pistol. He opened fire on the first of the black-clad attackers as they emerged from the hols in the floor and ceiling. He scored three successive hits before his target swung up his rifle and fired. Sly had heard from Fire cast veterans about the "Las Rifles" of the Imperium Imperial guard. They had described them as being accurate but light hitting, clearly this was something different because as soon as the unknown enemy pulled the trigger, his entire left arm evaporated. The pressure wave of expanding fluid was transmitted through the cells and soft tissue of his body, smashing into his internal organs and causing him to slump his last memory was of a human standing over him with a container of some kind. It was white and on its face was painted a red circle with a white cross imposed on it. Then the pain and internal damage overwhelmed him, and he drifted into merciful sleep.

/

In the end, it took the Tau commanders a full day to regain control of their forces. It wasn't just that I could shut off their communication at will. It was that I could send false orders. More than once Tau forces had blundered into traps because of orders I had fabricated, moving into pre-arranged killing fields of artillery and Mantis Assualt Bots. The distrust of the Tau forces towards anyone who they weren't talking to face to face grew as the time went on. A number of friendly fire incidents occurred that were completely unplanned. A flight of battle damaged Barracudas, returning from a savage dogfight to their home base at the main command centre were fired upon by the crews of the AA weapons, terrified that they were about to be the victim of a second enemy bombing run.

All told my counter-attack had cost me twenty-seven aircraft of all types, fifteen ground vehicles and a grand total of thirteen pilots. In exchange, we had cost the tau approximately ten thousand casualties. In truth, it wouldn't have mattered if we had killed just one Tau. Killing them had never been my goal. Far more importantly I had managed to eliminate approximately 90% of the enemy's airlift capacity. Reduced to burning wreckage of Orcas scattered over the deserts sands. Large formations of Tau troops were now stranded in their bases rapidly running through supplies, placed under a virtual siege without the need for a single jailor. The few surviving transports were now occupied running constant supply lines to the Tau forces. Whilst at all times being hunted by roving bands of Prowler interceptors fighters,.Inspite of their best efforts, by my estimate the Tau would start running out of fuel and water within a few days. If my little campaign had been allowed to continue uninterrupted then I have no doubt I would be able to gradually eliminate each of the pockets of trapped Tau forces one at a time. Alas, it was not to be.

/

Until this point my only knowledge of the warp had been random fragments of data collected via my ransacking of the Tau data net during the raid on the airbase. It referred vaguely to the Tau method of FTL which seemed to involve skimming into the Warp, another dimension of sorts that did not follow the normal laws of reality. At the time I had dismissed it as a relatively primitive species making their first forays into the use of the Quantum Relm for transport.

Then the Tau Courrier ship tour a hole in reality and dropped out of warp approximately 15 million kilometres from the planet, my atmospheric sensors focused on it automatically, for the faintest of moments I got a view of the warp in all its horrible glory before the warp rift closed itself as the laws of reality fought back. I was on my knees vomiting before I knew what was coming. By the end of it, I was dry heaving. In the corner of my eye, I could see reports popping up of other Cybrans suffering similar effects.

As a Commander my implants were more advanced than theirs and psionic dampeners buried in my brain tissue activated. I still felt like I had been run over by a tank but I was at least able to stand. It would take others hours to recover as much as I had. By then, of course, it was too late.

The Tau crew weren't stupid. When their sensors took in the numerous destroyed or damaged Tau basses planetside and the cloud of wreckage that surrounded the orbital station it swung its bow around and moving at the maximum speed it could without pulping the crew made the best speed out of the system. Half an hour later it jumped out of system.

I had known that the Courier ship was incoming, but according to my calculations, I had still had almost a month before it should have arrived. Of course, now I know that The Warp looks at concepts like order and reason and laughs but back then I had made the mistake of trusting in the predicted date of arrival I had pulled from Tau data files.

Being a minor mining base the Tau data networks on the planet were not the most up to date. However, from accessing more and more of their network in the leadup to my counter attack, I had begun to acquire some understanding of the strength of the Tau Empire, a vague idea of the size of its navy in nearby space and its industrial power. If the Quantum realm was behaving itself, allowing me to field larger numbers of more advanced units I might have been able to make a fight of it, as it was I had to do the one thing that Cybrans have done since the beginning of our existence. Run.

/

_A conclusion of the inquest into the incident on XV8815._

_Restricted to Etherial cast rank of Ui or higher. _

_The incident on XV8815 remains shrouded in mystery, even after half a year of diligent investigation by the Water and Etherial cast. There are a few facts that can be confirmed beyond a reasonable doubt. None the less outlined below is what is known to have happened. _

_An unknown force attacked and destroyed a minor airbase in the planets central deserts. Tau commanders attempted to retaliate by launching a search and destroy mission aimed at discovering and eliminating this force. Somehow the unknown enemy learned of this attack and launched a spoiling attack of their own. Their targets in this attack were logistical centres and officers of high rank and seniority. There are confirmed reports of the unknown enemy attackers placing themselves in danger just to have the chance to eliminate high ranking or experienced Tau personal. _

_Please see the attached video document that shows an unknown class of enemy fighter, (code word Spear Tip) deliberately endure attacks from Tau fighters so that it can line up a shot against the Kor'Ui in charge of this flight of Barracudas. Weather this is due to some of the enemy machines being unmanned or due to an extream commitment on the part of the piolets is unknown. The wreckage of the enemy's machines is scarce and seems to employ some kind of self-destruct to prevent analyzation. _

_With the loss of the upper command echelon and significant amounts of enemy interference on communication channels the Tau offensive stalled out, became disorganised and was attacked by the enemy using tactics that seem to resemble the Killing Blow, concentrating maximum force on isolated points of Tau resistance whilst other units were unable to assist due to the losses of much of the Orca transport fleet in the first day of the operation. Whether this is a coincidence or the result of an analysation of Tau tactics is unknown._

_Following the blunting of the offensive, Tau forces were attacked at will, until a Courier ship arrived to receive an annual status report. After this and the Courriors subsequent flight from the system, the enemy changed tactics. Tau forces were mostly left alone so long as they remained on their bases. The only exception were those Tau forces who were involved in guarding Human resettlement camps. These camps were repeatedly attacked, seemingly with the desire to abduct the human population inside. _

_Interestingly enough the guards at these compounds were offered surrender and in the handful of cases when it was accepted seem to have been well treated. This is the opinion of many Tau present rules out the unknown attackers as being from the Imperium of man._

_When the relief fleet arrived it found a world almost completely devoid of humans. What little remained of the orbital network detected a series of unknown starships lifting off from desert Badlands approximately a week before the arrival of the relief fleet. An internal investigation is underway to discover how these ships were able to land in the first place without being detected. _

_Many motives have been put forward for the unknown enemy's motivations. Until such time as a theory with sufficient evidence is produced they should merely be treated as speculation. For now, all Tau garrisons within a hundred light-years of XV8815 should move to condition two for the foreseeable future._

_For the greater good._


End file.
